Previous cognitive science research demonstrates how the Agent-action-Objective (AaO) paradigm controls the cognitive processes of differentiation and integration. The present discussion advances the process to the fourth of five phases. Of the four dependent variables emerging at this stage, two are discussed: zero processing and variations in…

Western philosophy has not had much to say about listening or receptive communication until fairly recently, and listening research has tended either to follow the trends of the speech communication field or to be directed by speech science or the pragmatics of the working world. A study examines the process of understanding and interpretation…

A study explored the degree to which people can capture the meaning of logical terms, using mental imagery. It was then hypothesized that: (1) subjects generally would fail to express logical relationships accurately, and (2) abstract images would be more difficult to capture than would concrete ones. Subjects, 25 college students, were asked to…

Intended to identify essential skills for academics and students as our society comes to depend increasingly on electronic text, and to decide how, when, and where these skills should be taught, this paper begins by discussing the tools of electronic information processing, i.e., telecommunications, computers, and software. A summary of the skills…

The development of a new grammar of English for machine translation systems at Weidner Communications Corporation is described. Although the project began with the intention of simply modifying the grammar rules already in use in the translation system, the reorganization of the grammar was deemed necessary for providing a principled manner of…

Two experiments investigated preschool children's use of the words "big" and "little" in three different ways (normative, perceptual, and functional) and in different contexts. The first experiment tested the sensitivity of 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds to relational standards by asking them to judge an object's size in relation to…

An experiment is described that is designed to test for the operation of an input switch mechanism in bilinguals. Their ability to selectively avoid processing words presented in one of their languages while they are attending to words presented in their other language is described. The 20 subjects were all French-English bilinguals. The specific…

The meaning of children's lexical innovations is distinguished from the forms they rely on to convey meaning. Children require knowledge of the context in order to judge how the meaning of their innovation can be conveyed to the addressee. This contextualization is often achieved by default, since children tend to limit their early conversations…

Determines the relation between recallability and recognizability in experiments presenting a study list, then giving a recall test for some items followed by a recognition test for all items. The results suggested that the set of recallable items were substantially, if not wholly, included within the set of recognizable items. (Author/EJS)

This study investigated the role of semantic variables, derivable from multidimensional scaling, in search and decision processes. (Author/RM)

This paper examines the relation between literacy and children's understanding of a set of concepts referred to as the "say/mean distinction," which is the notion that what a text says contrasts with subjective interpretations a reader or listener brings. (Author/MT)

Contends that simultaneous speech is not necessary for the recognition of "interruption" by interlocutors. A speaker's "completion right" is validated by how long s/he has been speaking, how often s/he has spoken, the number of "points" s/he has made, and the rights of some speakers to speak about some topics. (SED)

Presents a conceptual framework for analyzing and interpreting turn exchange and speaking turns from two perspectives: that of the surface forms of turn taking such as smooth and simultaneous exchanges and that of an empirical analysis of the formal or underlying structure of a turn-taking system. (SED)

Results from these two studies show that fast mapping--gaining information about a word from how it is used in a sentence, what words it is contrasted with, and other factors--can be used successfully by children two to four years old to form quick and rough hypotheses about the meaning of a word. (PCB)

Testing of eight-year-olds (N=159) with a battery of metalinguistic tasks, intelligence, and reading comprehension tests indicated that the relation among performance on metalinguistic tasks was strongest for those tasks relying on the same processing skill component. One of these components was most significant in determining the child's level of…